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ART REVIEW; Dashing World of Animals As Regal as Their Owners

Was the art of painting society horses in the 18th and early 19th centuries very different from that of painting society folk? Fine bones, firm flesh, luxurious manes, lustrous eyes, poised poses in verdant landscapes -- these were the ingredients that went into the portrayals of thoroughbred people by artists like Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Henry Raeburn and Thomas Gainsborough. And much the same characteristics appear in the Thoroughbred horses painted by the British artist James Ward (1769-1859).

''Eagle, a Stallion'' (1809), one of Ward's best animal likenesses, depicts a prize-winning racehorse admired for his strength and speed. Said to be an accurate physical portrait of the subject, it is also evocative of a dashing human type, its long, aristocratic face, faintly disheveled hairdo, intense expression and elegant stance in an open landscape giving it a romantically anthropomorphic presence. (On retirement, the stallion was shipped to Virginia, where he apparently pepped up American bloodlines.)

''Eagle'' is one of the stars of ''The Art of James Ward,'' a show of more than 30 paintings and 60 works on paper at the Yale Center for British Art. Besides this and even more famous horses, it includes a robust representation of Ward's other subjects; among them sheep, dogs, deer and oxen as well as landscapes, buildings and people. Organized by Angus Trumble, curator of painting and sculpture at the center, the aim of the exhibition is to bring this long-neglected artist, well known in his day, to public attention again. It doesn't hurt that Paul Mellon, who founded the center and left much of his collection to it, amassed more than 280 examples of Ward's work.

No one, of course, surpasses George Stubbs (1724-1806) -- another Mellon favorite -- as the grand master of English horse painting. Ward, who was born some two generations after Stubbs and eagerly sought fame for himself, was well aware of his predecessor's genius. His racehorse paintings differ from those of Stubbs not only in the master's superior talent but also in their more elemental appearance. As Mr. Trumble points out, Ward's subjects typically stand alone, without the visible support structure -- jockeys, grooms, owners, etc. -- of Stubbs's elegant renditions.

Ward arrived at animal portraiture after working as a printmaker specializing in mezzotint. He began painting in oil about 1790, starting out with the rustic subject matter that he knew. He also did animal portraits for private clients, and about 1798 he began working for the newly established Board of Agriculture on an extensive documentary project, depicting particular breeds of farm animals.

Among those shown here, along with some of the careful drawings from nature made on his travels through the countryside, is ''Ryelands Sheep: The King's Ram, the King's Ewe and Lord Somerville's Wether'' (circa 1801), a portrait of three upscale woolbearers painted during a week spent at Windsor Castle.

Stoically standing in a landscape, the two royal sheep, belonging to George III, and a wether (a gelded male) owned by Lord Somerville, president of the agricultural board, represented a new and improved breed of English livestock descended from Herefords, according to the painting's caption.

Another of the more than 200 animal subjects Ward did for the agriculture board was ''Gloucestershire Old Spot'' (circa 1800-5), an enormous brown-and-white pig whose breed was good for humongous quantities of pork and bacon. The boundless belly of this one alone could stoke an army of Englishmen.

Ward began portraying horses shortly after the death of Stubbs in 1806 and another famous equine portraitist, Sawrey Gilpin, in 1807. He is said to have turned to the genre in response to a cutting remark of his artist brother-in-law that good as he was with rustic subjects, ''he can no more paint blood horses than my boot.'' He knew that his work would be compared with the suave canvases of Stubbs and others in what was a fiercely rivalrous field. But his ambition and a talent fed by exposure to the work of Rubens, Van Dyck and careful copying of ancient sculpture like the Elgin marbles carried him along.

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A set of lithographs published in 1823-24 reproduces 14 paintings of ''celebrated horses'' who stood or sat, so to speak, to Ward. Among them is a heavily romantic likeness of Napoleon's stallion ''Marengo,'' depicted as a ghostly white steed on a spit of land, mane streaming in the wind, and the Duke of Wellington's mare ''Copenhagen,'' equally picturesque but apparently caught on a bad hair day.

An oil of 1815-20 portrays a truly magnificent ''Gray Arabian Stallion,'' the property of a rich landowner, Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn. Tail bobbed, mane combed, and bulging with powerful muscles, the stallion is seen not in open countryside but in a dense forest, a fairy tale steed seemingly conjured up by a magic word.

Occasionally Ward painted riders along with their horses, like the lively ''Theophilus Levett Hunting at Wychnor, Staffordshire'' (1817). The top-hatted, red-coated (but realistically mud-stained) Levett, having made it to a hilltop before the pack of hounds and other hunters, sits majestically on his mount, dramatically gesturing toward the fleeing fox as a lush English countryside rolls out invitingly behind him.

Ward was ambitious for membership in the Royal Academy and strove to move on from animal portraiture to the far more prestigious genre of history painting. In 1804, urged by Benjamin West to paint ''something large and striking,'' he finished a life-size canvas titled ''The Liboya Serpent Seizing His Prey'' for submission to the Academy's annual show. (A study for it is shown here.)

A startling close-up of a black horseman being strangled by a huge boa constrictor, it was an allegory for the suffering of African slaves, and referred to the abolition movement toward which Ward -- a church-going moralist -- was sympathetic.

But it was turned down by the hanging committee on grounds of its size (the final canvas was nearly 10 by 14 feet), its ''outlandishness'' and its ''staring'' quality. Ward did make it into the Academy by 1811, still striving toward recognition as a history painter. But it didn't happen. His most heroic attempt, ''Waterloo Allegory'' (1815-1820), was judged by himself and others a dismal failure.

By 1830 his work began to look old-fashioned, and he slipped into retirement, although he kept on painting, as he felt duty required. Today his masterpiece is considered to be ''Gordale Scar'' (circa 1811-12), a wild and rocky natural setting in West Yorkshire visited by Romantic tourists, but so dark and dense it was considered unpaintable. Challenged, Ward captured the scene in an enormous oil -- 11 by 14 feet -- that is now apparently about to emerge from storage at Tate Britain.

The only presence of the ''Scar'' in this show is a tiny, quite unreadable sketch that might have been made to secure the patronage of a noble whose estate was nearby. But those of us who haven't seen the full rendition must make do with Ward's ardent tributes to sheep, dogs and horses.

''The Art of James Ward'' remains at the Yale Center for British Art, 1080 Chapel Street, New Haven, (203) 432-2800, through Aug. 22.

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A version of this review appears in print on July 30, 2004, on Page E00036 of the National edition with the headline: ART REVIEW; Dashing World of Animals As Regal as Their Owners. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe